The Emperor’s power was based on the Imperial Palace. That was pretty key. He was a post-Twenty undead Psionic Lich, by all evidence the Human Exemplar while living. While his physical power and skill might be trailing, nobody in the galaxy had the same level of psychic power, except the Warp Gods themselves. Even the most powerful of jRaztl’s demons weren’t arrogant enough to face Him directly in a mental contest.

But, for all His power, He was just one guy on a crystal throne, playing timesight games across the galaxy that were working less and less for Big Events. The obfuscation of potential timelines was only increasing as potential possibilities kept getting narrowed down to things that Nulls and Sources were not interfering with... which meant ALL the Big Events were beyond Foresight now.

It had to be pretty annoying.

He could still play His games with the Demon Princes, who had the Warp Gods to help them play back, entirely because we weren’t interfering with Him and mucking up His predictions by dint of invisible contributions.

The fact was He was not going to die, He could only be killed. He wasn’t a god, but He could replicate the power of one.

And THAT was very, very key.

Yeah, on a personal level, He was very, very hard to deal with, but He still never left the Palace. Why? Because He needed to sit on that damn Crystal Throne.

It didn’t matter how arrogant He was, justifying to Himself that none dared to contest His personal power. If He wanted to reach across the galaxy, peer further and farther, he needed the power of the Crystal Throne.

We didn’t know how many dead Beacon Psions were now Animated to provide Him power for the thing. But we did know that without it... He was just a (literally) ungodly powerful undead Exemplar psion.

With it, He could spit into the face of the Warp Gods, and they knew it. He’d only gotten to this state when the rebellion of His kids had pulled Him off His throne.

Would He be so stupid again? Of course not. If they actually came within range to threaten Him on His throne, He’d just crush them, and there wasn’t a lot they could do about it.

If we wanted to win, either He had to come down off the Throne... or the Throne had to come down off Him.

Once again, the job was left to me.

I know, I know, this kind of thing was right up the alley of Voids, right? Stealth, anti-psion, anti-undead, weren’t they perfect for it?

But the Emperor knew about Void Brothers. He’d been murdering them and turning them into His puppets for at least six thousand years. They had kept Him down until He outlived them all and attacked them before they could defend themselves... as babes.

He knew Voids.

Sources are shit at stealth work like this because they radiate energy like lightbulbs, so trying to use stealth against magical and psionic forces who have any idea what to look for is basically a no-starter. Where Voids would suck in sensory energies, purify them, and re-emit them, Sources would just burn through them, like a bull going through spider webs.

The Voids would be unraveling the webs automatically, or draining them. Both factors would be paid attention to.

Nulls, done right, only had to Not Break Things.

An extended Null was like water... magic went into it, and reverted to its background state as it silently dispersed back to default.

However, a retracted Null could also be like stone, simply not allowing any external magic inside of it, a big smooth barrier it couldn’t enter. This was much less useful, of course, since the magic had to go somewhere... but if you want to move through stuff without disturbing anything, this was what you had to do.

Sources and Voids would break the magic, each in their own subtle way. Simply looking for the purified residual trail of a Void could potentially find them, even as they took down all your magical defenses.

There was no way at this point any of us believed that the Emperor didn’t know what to look for. The radiated power of a Source was basically the same kind of stuff, and would also set off the alarms.

That left it all to the Nulls, and to me.

At this point, I was probably the only Null who could reliably withstand a psionic assault directly from the Emperor in His line of sight. However, the shit He could do to the environment was likely not something I could deal with, and the high TL tricks and toys He doubtless had around could certainly put a major crimpling on me. Even with all my Levels, I wasn’t confident of taking on a small continent’s worth of high CL challenges, much as I might have been building up to do so, and practicing killing very large numbers of enemies.

Facing Him on the Crystal Throne was impossible, and even Grandmother didn’t consider it an option (since He could just weaken space and toss Her out instantly).

The Throne had to come down, and so it was up to me.

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Infiltrating the Imperial Palace was something that could only be done with pure skill, with maybe some very subtle technological help.

Any use of magic or psionics would be Detected. So no items that radiated such powers, or granted passive bonuses. That meant a bunch of my Gear had to remain behind, and Chalice literally had to empty her Psychic Reserve so she didn’t have any default enhancement bonuses. I gave her one point of Soul so she could remain awake and aware, but she literally couldn’t do anything except watch my back and be ready for a mass injection of PP and Soul Essence when it was time.

That being said, Feats which involved allocating Soul Essence, and just staying Focused, were all perfectly acceptable, as long as I didn’t release a Nimbus.

Stealth and Perception are The Skills. They had the most use in virtually any game you played, with #1 going to the latter. I had naturally gotten Every Damn Thing I could for them, in terms of personal accomplishments.

Twenty full Ranks, and Hide in Plain Sight meant I could walk into and out of a standing-room only crowd, and nobody would see me if they couldn’t make the check. I could hide in broad daylight on the sand in the middle of a salt flat.

+3 for Class Skill. My Dex score was in the 50+ range. +20. Skill Focus hit +10 at Twenty, Skill Affinity hit +6, and Skill Knowledge hit +3. Mastery was +5. Skilled Soul with 5 Essence was +10. It was a Mastered Skill, so taking 10 was a thing, with the Feat to make it Take 15 while Focused. I could maintain it while moving without a penalty, and it applied against all forms of senses and energies via Darkstalker. Favored Enemy/Courtier of Death was +10. Racial bonus was +8, thank you, demonkind...

It didn’t matter what they were using to look for infiltrators, I had it covered, and a maxed out Alchemical Stealth Suit at TL20 was another +10.

My hair’s ability to bend light and alter form was probably only +2, but that got me to a check of 122.

There was no technology or magic I couldn’t bypass, and I was pretty damn sure there was nobody around with a +112 Perception modifier... except maybe me, but that was something different.

Electromagnetic, psychic, and spatial energies swept through me as I sat there in space, fixed in position, and the whole solar system plus the orbit of the Palace sent it all racing towards me from a million miles away. As far as all the sensory systems were concerned, I was just a patch of empty space all their broadcasts were sliding around, and my hair was creating the mirror-field of light from every direction around me in case there really was something with Kryptonian-level vision looking for a human-level entity sitting out there in space all alone.

Sol moved at about 140 mps. The Palace was in Tellus’ orbit, which was about 20 mps. So the Palace was sweeping towards me at 160 MPS, as I was motionless relative to them as I stayed inertialess outside their sensory range.

This was a technological state; they couldn’t sense someone remaining mass-free, while my Vajra deflected the incidental atoms and particles that might push me into motion.

One hour, forty-four minutes, and ten seconds later, the Palace loomed up on me as I swallowed a Wraithform pill.

The Emperor was pretty damn powerful and thorough, but even He couldn’t completely seal the Imperial Palace against incorporeal infiltration after we blew the whole thing off Tellus. There were too many cracks and shattered rents in its foundations, and sure, while all the key areas were going to be treated to bar incorporeals, there were also going to be gaps in them so that the Emperor could send the Damned spirits caught in His thralldom wherever He needed to.

Said spirits were thick in the ether around the palace, which was no surprise, accompanying it through its orbit, and forming a spiritual wall against intruders trying to sneak in.

My position was directly between the Palace and Tellus, and I didn’t look like an intruder, I looked like just another one of the dead spirits of the Emperor’s Thralls being dragged into the area of His control, enslaved to His will, long may He reign.

None of them paid a lick of attention to me as I went back to Massed life, my precalculated velocity and vector matching that of the Palace, minus just enough to look like I was being dragged to it. I went from motionless and a 160 mps difference in velocity, effectively about to be pancaked by a continent in space, to moving just a bit slower and on the same path as them.

Ah, the wonders of math. Billions of incorporeals flew past me as I was ‘dragged’ past them, barely giving me a glance, seething with the helpless hate of their existences, and only wanting others to share their same damnation.

Yeah, I’d be doing something about that.

With little fanfare, I fell ‘into’ the Imperial Palace, as the rote rock it was built upon passed by in an ethereal blur, following the incorporeals and their density into the cracks of the Palace that other cursed souls were being drawn into, and even letting that psychic force tug on me as it did so.

There was a very bright light on the Ethereal Plane, easily extending through the rock, and even shrouding through the walls of treated durasteel that would bar incorporeal movement. The slits and gaps in those places were very obvious, of course, and I watched the wailing, screaming souls of so many dead getting dragged to them... and I went along for the ride.

The cracks and gaps varied between gaping and millimeters wide, but I was incorporeal and had no more substance than air, slid on through them without any problem whatsoever. The psychic draw on the souls of the dead was like a constant river of souls, thousands dying every second on Tellus, the Emperor feasting on the dead souls, even if He couldn’t get their bodies.

Then I was out into open space, and decisively neutralized the draw on myself, drifting off and to the side, and putting up all the Stealth. Effectively I was squirted out into the massive chamber here, and ceased to exist, just becoming part of the background ethereal mist.

So this is the Crystal Throne...